


Battle Scenes

by spaceleviathan



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 07:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceleviathan/pseuds/spaceleviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every time the Avengers fought Loki, Tony found himself disappearing from his teammates. And then there was Loki, who kept on taking him away for a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Scenes

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuses.

"Stark!" Fury barked. "Report!"

"No worries, Nick,"  Tony replied, hoisting himself off the ground and dusting himself off.  "Am I back on the grid?"

"Where the hell did you disappear to?"

"No clue. Loki just grabbed me-"

"Get back down to your teammates." Fury ordered, but he was barely heard over Cap and Hawkeye trying to get out their own grievances first.

"Are you okay? Make sure you're okay before joining us again. Remember what happened last time, Tony-"

"Dude, we are getting fucking slaughtered. Get your metal ass here right now."

"Yeah, I'm going to take Cap's advice." Tony said, staring down at his spitting armour. "I think my suit had an allergic reaction."

"To what?" Clint snorted. "One teleportation spell? Are you serious? The best tech in the world can't stand up to a single flimsy bit of magic?"

"Hey, this thing is a sensitive instrument." Tony defended, before correcting himself. "And actually, no, it wasn't just the spell. It was the way those monsters from another planet decided to start throwing me about like a _ragdoll._ "

"Seems your suits not the only sensitive instrument around here, Stark. As if your ego can't take one blow."

"As if your aim can't hit a goddamn massive  _creature from Hel_."

"They're fast bastards!"

"Iron Man, where are you?" Steve cut across, finally drawing the line with their bickering, and Tony glanced around briefly before his attention was drawn back to the suit.

"I dunno. Top of a skyscraper. Square, white. I don't think I'm too far away. Why?"

"Because I can see Loki."

Tony replied with an interested noise. "Where?"

"At the top of a white, square skyscraper."

"Shit."

Tony looked up and there he stood, in all his helmed glory: Loki of Asgard, bright-eyed,  armoured, with a slick twist to his lips, advancing on him at high-speed.

Iron Man managed to achieve a snide, "How long have you been there?" before he was grabbed by the throat and hoisted to the ledge. Loki stood precariously at the edge, keeping Tony by the neck and leaning him backwards.

The psychotic god tore off Tony's visor and threw it over the building uncaringly; proving a point. _Can you hear that distant crunch of your metal warping under the pressure, as its fall was suddenly terminated?_

_No. Neither can I._

Loki was looking at him all the while, serene as a fucking cotton candy cloud, smiling as he watched Tony flail from the weight of his suit dragging him back. All that was keeping Iron Man from dropping from the top of New York straight down to the bottom of it was that single hand holding him tightly, slowly choking the life out of him. Tony took a moment to consider which death he'd prefer.

"Where have I seen this before?" Loki breathed, observing him with wonder-filled emerald eyes, and if he wasn't channelling _The Lion King_ right now, so help him Tony would call up the villain complaint line and tell them they'd run out of original one-liners.

"Probably when you were dangling Mufasa off a cliff." Tony coughed, ignoring the buzzing of his concerned team-mates in his ear. If they had seen Loki from all the way down there, then they were definitely getting a full-on visual of the scene right now.

Loki's expression was patient, careful, calm, but it was an obvious mask, hiding the tumultuous madness beneath. It didn't matter how long he stood there with his unruffled composure intact - it wasn't about to wipe away the fact that he was a single hand-twitch away from another cold-blooded murder.

"What did you say last time before you hurled me off a tall building?" Tony tried to think back through the adrenaline, finding it easier when state-dependent memory came to his aid. "Oh, right. _You will all kneel_. How's that working out for ya?"

Without warning Loki's hand was loose, and Tony instinctively jerked against the tug of gravity, grabbing on to the nearest steady object to hold on to. That, unfortunately, turned out to be Loki.

There was more screaming in his ear as the Avengers panicked, watching him from down below with terror, but unwilling to get any closer due to the proximity the super-villain had to the hero. Loki would sooner use Tony as a dead human shield than give up peacefully.

Peace had never really been on the table with this one, to be honest.

Tony, once more, found himself brushing off the worries of his friends in favour of staring in no small amount of surprise at the sudden decrease in distance between himself and a severely irate deity.

With his shock came the dropping of walls, and Iron Man found himself confronted with someone very different to the psychopath only playing at nice.

Now was a face gnarled with rage at a plan gone awry, but if Tony was the type to tell the truth, he rather thought this had more dramatic effect. A sudden reprieve of a terrible death along with a flood of relief filling him from top to bottom when he realised he wasn't plummeting to his grizzly end? That was something beautiful, and something that would destroy him if Loki suddenly took it away.

But Tony found Loki couldn't, not immediately, since his iron gauntlets had wrapped themselves pretty tightly around the god's biceps. Tony's face was close to Loki's, too close even by the playboy's standards, and they gaped, gobsmacked, at each other, trying to process what had happened.

"I'm alive." The human informed the god promptly, just to clear up any confusion.

Loki's eyes started to wander, taking in every aspect of Tony's features up close with intense scrutiny. Despite himself, Tony felt uncomfortable; suddenly aware of every personal fault, every wrinkle, every sign of age or abuse of his body. The bags under his eyes from irregular sleeping habits, the scars across his cheeks from one too many battles, the increasing grey in his beard as the years wore him down.

In the face of Loki - over a thousand years old, but still looking ten years Iron Man's junior - who had nary a blemish or imperfection, Tony's skin crawled. With what, he couldn't say; disgust, that such evil should have such a pretty face, or envy that Loki didn't wear his life on his sleeve as Tony did. Or shame, that humanity was so pathetically fragile. Or, perhaps, something else-

" _Are_ you alive?" The god of mischief finally spoke, only as soft as was necessary in the slither of personal space between them. "Or are we simply seeing the end of an unfortunate pattern?"

"I'm not dead until you kill me."

"Well, that sounds like a challenge." And this time, instead of passively letting him drop, Loki actively shoved.

That was an unfair tactic, Tony considered as he fell, refusing to think of what was waiting for him at his back, since Loki was blessed with the strength of Thor, sequestered neatly away into a smaller, more appealing package.

\--

Thor caught him, obviously. It was going to be either him or Bruce's not-so-bad-actually-SHIELD-are-just-blind-and-narrow-minded-idiots side, and the Hulk had done it last time.

Maybe next time Tony would be able to save himself. He really didn't fancy anymore drops from dauntingly high-places. At this rate he was going to develop acrophobia.

If he did, he was going to make Loki pay for his damn therapy.

Not that a little therapy wouldn't do Tony some good, since his last few thoughts, had the god of thunder not saved his ass, would have been: _Perhaps if I'd clung on tighter, he'd have wound up throwing himself down with me._

It hadn't been the thought which had disturbed Tony so much as the sentiment following: _But if I did, he'd have ruined those impressive cheekbones._

Tony had a weakness, unfortunately, and impeccable bone structure proved to be one of them.

\--

The next time Loki and Tony were in such close contact, it was several months later and the general tone of the day was significantly more relaxed. So far there had been no deaths, nothing too pricey had been destroyed (which came out of Tony's account, so he, at least, was thankful for the lack of property damage), and Loki had only made some run-of-the-mill threats that the Avengers had long since become immune to.

There had been too many villains, too many 'scary' encounters, too many close calls. Together, they were just a skilled ball of apathy every time the newest evil-doer of the week poked out their heads in hope of maybe hi-jacking the city for a few minutes. Some succeeded, but it was getting to the point where the Avengers were so damn efficient that they were only answering 'urgent' calls in select pairs.

For Loki they made an exception and they'd all decided to show up for the party. Loki was one person they never dared underestimate.

But a healthy appreciation of how dangerous the god was didn't mean that Tony went any easier on the sarcasm. Witty banter with Loki didn't always occur, but needle him hard enough and you could make him join in with the dance. He'd never step to the right tune, of course, but that was simply Loki's way. Give him a tango, he'd return with a waltz. Give him a foxtrot, and he might only throw Tony from a ten-storey window.

They were once again high up, with Tony's repulsors on the fritz and no real way down without a sudden drop. What was worse this time, however, was that the two of them were not simply suspended over the edge of a skyscraper, oh no. No, they were floating in the middle of the goddamn sky, looking down upon the world from a view Tony usually reserved for midnight joy-rides after SHIELD had said 'no'.

Tony was wrapped around Loki as securely as he could manage, clinging like a leech and holding on for his dear life. Quite literally. Loki wasn't keeping him safe, but neither was he actively shaking the human loose. He was simply grinning down at him maliciously, delightedly.

"I'm glad you think this is funny."

"I'm glad to see that you do not."

"Well, if this is your idea of humour, you should stick to your day job."

"This _is_ my day job, Stark."

"Then I'd go job-hunting. You'll be fine. I'm sure there are plenty of places out there looking for a heartless, sociopathic Frost Giant with a history of violence and attempted world domination."

"I hear there's soon to be an opening in Stark Industries."

"I like that threat. It's just the right side of scary with a particularly cheesy aftertaste." Tony nodded, approvingly, looking forward where he could see his own tower not too far in the distance. "Though I feel like you're about to bowl me at my own building, which I don't like as much."

"I'd be doing the world a favour." Loki shrugged, and the movement almost dislodged Tony then and there. "It's actually quite unsightly."

"If you did, Cap would probably shake your hand." Tony agreed, and Loki hummed.

"Would you like to let go yet, Stark?"

"No, I'm happy here," the inventor replied, staring down at the vast expanse between him and the ground. He knew he'd fallen from a height such as this before, but he was unconscious when that happened so he didn't recall. After today, he'd be lucky if he went to the skies again without crippling bouts of anxiety to destabilise his flight pattern. "Why, are you getting bored? I'm sure there's some action on the ground."

Loki shook his head, turning to Tony with that same patient look as the last time they'd been in such immediate contact. "I'm waiting to see how long you'll last."

"I bet watching me become a particularly colourful pancake will just about make your New Year."

"'Kill the Avengers' _is_ on my list of resolutions."

"Well, only five more to go."

"You look like you're struggling to die. Would you like some assistance?"

"Whoa there," Tony snapped, clinging tighter to the black-haired bastard when he put his hands on Tony's hips as a method of throwing him off. "I'm pro-euthanasia, don't get me wrong, but I'm not suicidal."

Loki sighed dramatically, falsely, somewhat humorously. "I suppose that counts as murder, therefore. Then again, I've never seen the issue with homicide."

"I'm going to bite you."

"Childish."

"Iron Man, what's going on?" Cap asked through the comms, with Clint inserting a: "Are you dead yet?"

"No, I'm not dead. I'm still with Loki."

"We could use your help."

"Can't." Tony replied, with only a little guilt. There wasn't anything he could do at this point. "I'm stuck."

" _Stuck_?"

"Yes, stuck. Either Loki flies me back down to earth or I fall down. Take your pick."

"I wish you'd stop falling from the sky." Thor grumbled, sounding about ready to come save the fair metal damsel in distress, but Tony stopped him.

"I'm fine. I'm just having a nice chat with your brother. Say 'hi', Loki." Loki did no such thing, scowling in the opposite direction.

"Convince him to stop the attack." Nat suggested, and Tony considered it.

"We'll see."

Loki's attention returned to him when he shut the comms off, and Tony shrugged as much as he could when the god's eyebrows quirked in question.

"They're asking me to reason with you, but I think you'd respond better to biting. You look like that sort of guy."

"I think you'd prefer to take your chances with the former." Loki warned.

"Well, you're wrong." Tony returned, setting out to prove it as he aimed for a stretch of Loki's skin, and in a cobra-esque strike managed to clamp down his teeth on something fleshy. Loki had seen the sudden movement and reacted accordingly, shifting the position of his face so Tony didn't bite down too hard on something important, like his neck.

Then Tony realised what he'd caught between his teeth. It was only when Loki unconsciously grazed his lips over Tony's that either of them thought to pull back.

"You bit me." Loki said into the silence, his bottom lip looking raw under the vicious treatment it had undergone.

Tony nodded. "Well, I did warn you."

"It's strange, but I am suddenly quite taken by the notion of Iron Man pancakes."

"You're going to hold this over me until you inexorably kill me one day, aren't you?"

"The thought hadn't even crossed my mind," Loki said sweetly, and his innocent eyes would have melted even the iciest, darkest parts of Fury's heart.

Tony wasn't buying it.

"I'd prefer you get it over with now, then," he said, closing his eyes and waiting for the inevitable push-

\--

"He just _let you down_?" Fury marvelled, for perhaps the eighth time in twenty minutes, and Tony was starting to get sick of it.

"No. He teleported me to about twenty feet above a building." Fury glared, three shades darker than his signature look, and Tony raised his hands in compliance. "Which in a way I guess means he _did_ just let me down. Is that so hard to believe?"

A chorus of harmonic protests immediately burned his question to ashes.

"Alright, admittedly it's a little weird," Tony said, because from any other perspective the inventor could see why they were baffled. "But Loki's a little weird, so maybe that's something to do with it."

"Stark, his damn Christmas list included the words: _Santa, please can I have the Avengers' heads wrapped-up in ribbons. I've been a particularly good_ fucking _boy this year._ " Fury reminded him.

"We're on his New Year's resolution as well," Tony deigned to inform the group blithely.

"Then why are you still alive?"

Tony shrugged, Fury fumed, and the Avengers threw out suggestions. The only one keeping himself distant was Thor, who perhaps wasn't as much as a ditz as everyone thought he was. He couldn't be. Not with the way he was staring at Tony like he knew something the inventor didn't.

\--

"Loki!" Thor screamed as his brother was dragged down under the water. The image of a pale hand desperately grasping at the side of the boat was what solidified Tony's resolve. It was either save Loki or be scarred forever.

Not that Loki didn't deserve to be dragged to a watery grave, on account of the fact it was probably him who had summoned goddamn Cthulhu in the first place.

"It's not Cthulhu." Natasha informed them as soon as the report came in. "It's a kraken."

Kraken or Cthulhu, it made no difference to Tony who'd prefer to know how to kill it than how to define it. It had just showed up out of nowhere in New York Harbour, and Loki was the obvious candidate for the Avengers' newest problem. Or, he had been, before he'd appeared in front of them with an offer to help. Not help _them_ specifically, but rather to keep 'his' land from being torn apart by the crazed wild animal destroying the city with its gigantic tentacles.

After a few rounds with the increasingly irate creature, fighting alongside Thor like they'd never fallen out whilst the Avengers had stayed on the boat and stared, Loki got in a particularly good shot and landed, triumphant, alongside his brother. Not quite knowing what to say, the Avengers shifted uncomfortably, unhappy about being saved by a maniac.

Then, of course, before he could say anything snide, Loki had been grabbed by the wild-eyed animal and pulled overboard by his ankle.

And perhaps the look on his face would have even been funny, had his nails not left six-inch deep gouges in the metal lining of their ship.

Tony had gone to jump in after, but Steve stopped him with a worried expression.

"Your suit runs on electricity."

Tony would have corrected him, or, for preference, push him away urgently in order to save a life, but Thor had beat him to the chase and had dived in after his family.

The Avengers jolted to the side and peered down to the waves where the monster could be seen thrashing under the water. It sent splashes and spray over the observers without care, and only Tony, hidden away under his suit and analysing the choppy readings JARVIS was collecting, really had a chance at understanding what was happening.

Personally, Tony had been lost the moment he'd seen a giant octopus in the middle of New York, so he had nothing.

Thor emerged eventually, long after the waves had stood still and the moment had become too tense, and they happily hauled him aboard whilst he sucked in the air gladly.

"My brother-" he then said, shooting up and staring around, but his teammates could only shake their heads. There had been no sign of the mischief god since he'd been pulled into the depths.

Thor was given a towel, which he wrapped around him after he'd stood, and he took to standing at the side of the ship, looking down to the bubbles made by the monster, now dead, which were marking its descent ever downwards.

"Good job with the kraken." Tony praised, a tentative attempt to distract the thunderer from his angst, but it only made things worse.

"I did not kill the beast."

"Loki did?"

Thor nodded before Tony took that titbit of info to the Avengers.

"Loki can take down a kraken by himself?" Cap gaped, and Clint shrugged.

"Didn't look _that_ hard."

"I'd have liked to see _you_ do it." Tony snapped thoughtlessly, before frowning at his quick defence.

"Yeah, okay, that was weird." Hawkeye slowly pointed out, but they were all distracted by a joyous bark of laughter from their previously moping big-'n'-blond.

Even though Thor looked happy to see Loki clambering back onto the ship, the Avengers certainly weren't. He was a wreck of bruises and cuts, whilst his leather creaked with the water and his hair dripped across his face. His unspeakably livid face, with burning green eyes and a dangerous snarl, shouldn't have made Tony's breath catch at the back of his throat.

"Goddamn." He breathed, hardly a whisper against the wind, but thankfully no one heard him. Loki, panting, furious, out for blood, didn't notice, at least not immediately. At least not until all the other Avengers stepped back, and Tony and Thor made aborted steps in the opposite direction. _Then_ Loki glanced to Tony, and Tony, for a moment, thought Loki could read what was in his head with those x-ray eyes that trained so solidly on his face. He thought he was going to die then and there, by the hands of a god who smelt like dead fish flesh.

But then Loki was gone, leaving only a very gory puddle of kraken chunks behind him, and everyone was left alive, surprised, and actually intact for once. Tony had not a scratch on him.

"Was that me, or did the super-villain just do our jobs for us?" The inventor pointed out, and Clint groaned.

"Fury's going to skin us alive."

Cap looked anxious, biting his lip and glancing to the team hopefully. "Maybe he won't find out."

\--

Fury did find out.

Fury had been watching the entire spectacle via satellite.

Fury called them all useless excuses for meat-sacks, except Thor who had excused himself to mope at the top of Avengers tower.

The Avengers (minus Steve) had stopped listening to the mean things Fury called them a week into the job.

Tony had never actually started.

\--

The next time they faced Loki in a battle situation, Loki was clean, dry, and smelling once again of leather and spices.

They had been battling Doctor Doom, a brilliant scientist with idiotic ideas, when Loki had popped up out of the blue. The other Avengers hadn't noticed, but Tony most certainly did. This was by design, however, as Loki seemed to only have eyes for Iron Man.

He also very quickly had Tony by the neck in an abandoned room at the top of an empty warehouse.

And perhaps Loki was leaning a little too close, and perhaps Tony was staring a little too hard, and maybe neither of them were really listening to each other as they went through the motions. Loki pushed Tony against a window, hard enough to crack but not enough to break, and pressed his weight against him.

"What is it with you and heights?" Tony heard himself say, seconds before the glass creaked under him and Tony tried to shove himself off. Unfortunately, there was a body in the way. A body which seemed to be expecting him.

Their faces crashed together messily, and then they froze.

"That was an accident, right?" He said, and Loki's face, now only centimetres away, warped into a repulsed sneer.

"Of course it was, mortal. You're _abhorrent_."

"Good." Tony nodded determinedly, raising his arms and wrapping them around Loki's neck. "Because this is, too."

Loki twisted them both around as Tony kissed him hard, shoving him into a real wall that wasn't on the verge of breaking and plastering himself against Tony completely as the human tried to draw him closer, pulling the god's tongue into his mouth with his own.

Wandering hands lead to nowhere good, or, from Tony's view, somewhere fucking _fantastic_ , and Loki looked about ready to rip the armour from Tony's skin with his teeth just to get him out of it. Tony wasn't really happy with the fact that actually, maybe he _would_ sacrifice a single suit just to have Loki closer.

And then the comm went on a mission to deafen him, demanding his location as the Avengers finally notice Tony had gone far, far off the grid, not for the first time, and that just about broke whatever tentative mood there was.

Loki shoved him away, his front returned but his hair a wreck, as senses came back to the both of them. Loki's face was twitchy again. He disappeared without any kerfuffle, no glitz or glam to accentuate his rather abrupt dismissal of Tony's company, leaving the inventor wanting to know where _he_ actually was. If he wasn't on the grid, he was probably a fair few miles away. Maybe even out of the city.

"I was just kidnapped by a deranged god of mischief," he told the gang immediately, before he'd even had chance to wrap his head around what happened, with much sighing to be had by his friends.

"We thought you were in danger." Steve protested. "Or one of the doombots had got you. You should have just said you were with Loki."

"When did Loki become 'not danger'?" Tony asked bewilderedly, because Loki was _always_ dangerous, and he _always_ would be. The words 'I've been taken by Loki' should be raising the alarm bells, not soothing them.

"He hasn't kill you yet. And he repeatedly keeps on not killing you." Natasha explained, which didn't make anything clearer.

"Maybe the next time Loki kidnaps me, he actually will. Maybe it's all a ploy to relax you so he can execute me without hindrance."

Clint snorted. "Yeah, whatever."

"He probably will now, and while it's happening you'll all be curled up at _my_ house, watching _my_ films, eating _my_ food, and not worrying because _it's fine, he's with_ _Loki_."

"You should not underestimate my brother." Thor tried to back the billionaire up, but it wasn't a sound argument. _No one_ was underestimating Loki, and they knew what he would do if he got his hands on one of them. One of them who wasn't Tony, anyway.

"Hey, the moment he kills Stark I'll begin worrying again." Clint informed them bluntly. "'Till then, I don't care."

\--

And perhaps Hawkeye had a valid point, since the next time Loki transported them both away Tony immediately raised his visor so he could kiss him. That probably lost them some hero/villain points along the way, wrapped around each other as they were, pretending for a little while that they didn't need to breathe. They'd seen each other a few time since the last battle, during late nights or sneaky early mornings (and once over a bar at a flashy fundraiser), and not all of them involved mere eye-contact. Actually, most of them involved something more like what they were doing now, only with a little less material stopping their hands from reaching skin.

"Not the time, Loki," Tony told him as they broke away, and Loki rolled his eyes, untangling his hands from the human's and stepping back three paces.

"Perhaps this will help," before he shot him straight through a wall with magic.

This, at least, did make the Avengers a little more wary about how safe Tony truly was in Loki's hands. That minor victory was probably worth the damage done to his suit and the headache Tony nursed for the next half-week.

\--

They didn't always pay attention to each other in the middle of their battles, of course. Sometimes there were just more important things.

Such as when Loki was feeling particularly sensitive, he focused on Thor and his revenge and his family's 'betrayal' rather than Tony and his libido; unable to have any fun when he was feeling so miserable. Tony accepted that.

Tony, meanwhile, sometimes just felt too off-balance and on-edge to dare look at Loki, much less touch him. There were lines he told himself he would never cross, and those were the days when he felt he was coming too close to passing over to the wrong side. Loki was the key to a very dangerous door that Tony wanted no part of.

But otherwise, they had fallen into a definite pattern. Not so much outside the battlefield, during which anything was fair play, but in the clear view of Avengers and SHIELD and whatever potential super-villain club Loki was part of, there were a set of rules that they had to accept. Loki didn't like it, and nor did Tony, but there was mischief and then there was stress. It was more practical for them both to get over themselves and keep on sneaking around than potentially being shunned by the other for their wrongdoings.

Or at least, that was Tony's logic. He really had no clue what made Loki comply. Probably boredom, wanting to see how this panned out. The mad inventor did too, if only for science.

\--

"I like this better," Tony agreed, walking up to the bar to pour them both a drink as Loki deposited them in his own penthouse. "Shaken or stirred?"

"It doesn't matter. And Bond never defined such things outside the movies."

He accepted his drink, swallowing it down quickly like water, and encouraging Tony to do the same. They were on a schedule after all. Here was literally only a minute or less reprieve before Loki had sent them both back into the dark alley Iron Man had shot the villain into.

"You know, the way you've adapted to human culture scares me." Tony reported upon landing on the mucky ground. "Thor's a quick learner, but even he's pretty stuck in his ways. You, however, are just crazy up-to-date. You just throw off your old coat and pick up a new one without any hint of nostalgia, don't you?"

"Dangerous emotion, nostalgia." Loki agreed lightly, catching Tony by the lips for a brief moment, before kicking him back out to the streets. Tony fell painfully on his back, face-plate slotting back into place, and cursing Loki with the most colourful language in his repertoire.

"Tony!" Cap cried from across the way, whilst, as soon as Loki re-emerged from the shadows, Hawkeye sent an arrow towards his eye. He never hit Loki outside of a few lucky shots, but Loki always got caught out by which particular arrow he had caught this time.

Today was one which involved gas, but it had no effect other than making the god's nose crunch up prettily. Tony was thankful he'd replaced his visor across his face, else he would have given the game away then and there by the way he just _knew_ his face had slackened into 'inexplicably fond'.

He wasn't about to tell anyone about that either. Even Loki.

 _Especially_ Loki.

\--

"Iron Man's off the grid," Natasha reported dutifully. "Again."

Steve groaned, alongside a snort from Clint.

"You know what, I'm not even surprised. I bet him and Loki have a cup of tea and play the 'we're smart and they're all idiots' game." The archer grouched.

"What are the rules?" Natasha wondered, honestly as intrigued as Cap was, but they were both sadly disappointed by Clint's dismissive answer.

"Do I look like I have the IQ and the insanity to play a game made-up by Tony and Loki?"

"None of us do." Steve told him lightly, because - barring Doctor Banner when he'd calmed himself down - no one was a match for Tony. And that was really saying something, considering none of them were even bordering the realms of stupidity.

"Where is he?" Fury sighed, more resigned now than frustrated, and that was a sentiment they could all share.

"We should just go back to the tower." Clint suggested. "I bet he's there with Loki and a cup of coffee, just laughing at us."

"Is that part of the 'we're smarter than they are' game?" Black Widow queried.

"Probably."

"No coffee break until you've cleared up the streets. Those little monsters are everywhere. Find Stark later." Fury barked, and the Avengers turned back to their jobs.

They didn't even know what they were battling. They were shadows, small and quick and dark, with no real defining features. They were also hard to kill - dissipating at the touch of a blow, only to regroup and form again elsewhere.

They weren't really doing anything other than scaring people, breaking things and occasionally attempting to spit something dark and disgusting at the Avengers. All in all, they were more a nuisance than an attack.

That didn't mean they weren't getting on the team's nerves.

"I am going to seriously get Loki for this." Clint swore when he failed once again to shoot one of the _things_ to its death, even with the use of his exploding arrows. "Where is he? Maybe shooting him right here and now will get rid of these fuckers."

"Try to round them up, then perhaps we can contain them. Head towards the tower. At least we know that's defendable."

"And if Tony's there with Loki, maybe he'll remember he's supposed to be helping _us_."

Natasha, Steve and Hulk kept to the ground, with the Hulk playing sheep dog in rounding the creatures up. He hated that they didn't stay squished once he had bore his fist down upon them, but the violence seemed to daze them. From above, Thor and Clint were keeping the strays in line, forcing them to move in the right direction.

When they reached the entrance to Stark Tower, they found SHIELD agents waiting for them with large containers which, theoretically, would hold the shadow creatures. Steve wasn't so sure, but at this point he'd take his chances.

"I'm going to check in on Tony." Clint said across the comms when he declared the mission out of his hands. He used a grappling-hook arrow to play at George of the Jungle, swinging from one building to another rather than taking the front door.

Whilst waiting for Clint to report back on whether Tony _had_ just gone home or whether he was genuinely missing, the remaining Avengers found themselves stuck for a solution since SHIELD's containers did not work.

"Shit!" Clint screamed into their ears, and immediately everyone's attention was on more important matters.

"Hawkeye?" Steve questioned, whilst Thor was already in motion, swinging his hammer and propelling himself and Natasha upwards. It was the Hulk who grabbed Steve, aware of the sudden distress between his teammates even without a headset of his own. "Hawkeye, answer! Are you alright? Is Tony there with you?"

"Holy fucking mother of _fuck_." Clint snarled, and now his tone was unmistakably livid. "What the _fuck_ are you doing, Stark?"

The team were at the balcony in no time, bursting in to Tony's penthouse to find, just as Clint had foretold, Loki and Tony. They standing together by the window, Tony with his hands raised in a passive gesture, trying to calm the archer down, whilst Loki took to eying his brother warily.

"Loki-" Thor wondered, but the sorcerer disappeared in that instant, and Tony using his own inventive selection of language in light of his sudden absence.

"Tony, what's going on? What are you doing up here?"

"Him!" Clint roared. "He had his tongue down that psychopath's throat!"

They all turned to stare at Tony who was spluttering in an attempt to defend himself, finally coming up short with a guilty twist to his face and a pair of defeated shoulders.

Down below, the shadows had vanished with Loki, proving only that they were a distraction so he and Tony could take a moment away. This further enraged his teammates who, betrayed and angry, dragged him to the common-room for a SHIELD-grade interrogation.

\--

"It was an accident."

"Is that what they're calling it now?"

"It _was_."

"No, it wasn't." Natasha spat at him, disgusted. "Accidental lip-lock only happens in films, Stark. Accidental tongue-sucking only happens in _porn_ films."

And, okay, maybe that was true. Maybe that first time his aim hadn't been so off. Maybe, Loki hadn't been reacting instinctively. Maybe that _had_ both known what they were doing.

But Tony wasn't about to admit that. He'd already been battling enough self-doubt, and they had long since dismissed the notion that every time they were together was excusable, not their fault, an accident. But that it  had _started_ as one was really all Tony had left to cling onto.

"Why did you do it?" Steve asked, baffled more than offended, unlike Clint who looked like he was going to follow Doctor Banner's example and hulk out at any moment. He was pacing the length of the room whilst Tony sat deeply reclined in his leather sofa, tired and stressed. He knew he didn't have the right to feel as if he were the victim of bullying; not when he'd been caught red handed doing something he shouldn't be. But that didn't mean he was about to stop feeling harassed.

Wisely, Thor had taken himself out of the room to go help Bruce de-hulk. Both had a bit of calming down to do, along with Hawkeye who Steve had tried to push out with them, but the archer was not compliant.

"Why, Stark?" Clint hissed. "Don't you know who he is, or is your sex drive so fucking out of control that it doesn't remember how many people he's _killed_? Innocent, good, hard-working fucking _people_. Not a statistic, not an abstract concept - they were lives and he took them away.

"Or what about me?" He continued, on the point of spitting flames. "If they're not real enough for you, look at me. Remember what he did to me? He took _control of me_ and used me as a murder weapon. And yet you're still okay with touching him? Is he a good lay? He fucking _better be_."

"Clint." Natasha said forcefully, and immediately the assassin held his tongue. He didn't look happy about it, but he knew better than to argue with Natasha when she used that tone. "You better start answering some questions, Tony."

Tony was fidgeting with a loose string on his shirt, and his only reply was a shrug. He was never one with words, not when it came to the truth, but was thinking hard, looking for some eloquence when he needed it the most. They gave him a few minutes to come up with his best excuse.

"I didn't mean to, I _swear_ ," he promised, looking Clint deep into his blue eyes. "It wasn't on my to-do list. I didn't wake up one day and think _today I'm going to sleep with Loki_. It just-" he waved a hand, trying to gesticulate what he couldn't articulate. "He just-"

"He just what, Stark? He just batted his pretty fucking eyes and you came running like a lapdog, was that it?"

"Clint-"

"Or was it you who seduced him? You're good at that, aren't you - getting people into bed? Should we be asking Loki to indicate on a doll where you fucking touched him? Is molesting super villains going to become a habit?"

"Stop it."

"No, I will not _stop it_. You fucking  _fucked_ him."

"Yes, I did, and I am not apologising to any of you for it!" Tony growled furiously, standing up and glaring down at them all, nostrils flaring as he met Clint's eyes again. "I'm sorry for lying about it, and I'm sorry for not easing you into it a bit more. Mostly, I'm sorry that you found out at all, but I'm not sorry I slept with him and you can go fuck yourself if you want me to be."

"He's evil!" Clint screamed, coming up to Tony and crowding his personal space, but Tony refused to be cowed. Not here, not now, not about this. He wondered with half a mind why he was being so stubborn, but it wasn't a question really worth answering. The answer came to him as easily as breathing. Here was something he'd always defend, even if he didn't want to.

"Maybe." Tony allowed to the archer's statement, because the inventor couldn't deny the evil things Loki had done and would, in all likeliness, continue to do regardless of his affiliation with Iron Man.

"What, and you don't _care_? You don't care that he almost destroyed New York? That he killed Coulson?"

"Of course I do!" Some days Tony couldn't get it out of his head. He'd seen the body, he'd seen the bloodstain, and worse, he'd known Coulson when he was alive. He had been thinking about letting Tony help with that cellist in Portland...

So, yes, he cared. He cared more than he showed. He cared more than he ever wanted to. It tore him apart, how much he continued to care. He wished he could just turn his back on Loki and tell him precisely why they had to stop this, and perhaps even arrest him just to get himself back in SHIELD's good books, but he couldn't. He _wouldn't_ , which was perhaps the shitter of the two realisations.

"Tony," Steve said very softly, dragging the attention of the two riled up, highly dangerous men to the good-natured super soldier. "Just tell me what went through your mind the first time you willingly kissed him?"

Tony tried to think, bringing up the warehouse, his arms wrapped around Loki's neck as the god pressed in close, sandwiching Iron Man between his body and a wall. He was, at this point, still trying to cling onto the idea of innocence. _Loki kissed me first_ , which was not strictly true. _Loki_ , he revised, _set up this situation to be kissed_. That was closer. But that wouldn't do for the Avengers, who were clearly looking for something more.

"He's like me." He eventually replied, sounding colder than he intended to, more distant and nasty. "I need that, sometimes."

"Why?"

"To remind me that I'm not him. That I didn't go that way, and I didn't do the things he's doing. Not knowingly." Because he had killed innocent people too. The difference was that Loki laughed about it.

"That doesn't mean you have to sleep with him." Clint sneered. Tony swallowed.

"I didn't mean to." He said, but he wasn't talking about the kisses, about the secret meetings, about the sex, about the stolen touches at the worst of times. He was talking about something more - something that _was_ an accident; one thing that Tony didn't want to feel more than anything.

"You're kidding me." Clint read from his face, and the genius wished for just a second that his teammates weren't so bloody intelligent.

"What?" Cap said, unable to see Tony's expression properly, therefore he couldn't read the conclusion from his features as Hawkeye had done. And then there was Natasha, who didn't need to see Tony's face to know what he meant. She could read social cues, situations and people like no one else and could tell it was time for her to take Clint away before Tony reached the edge of his tether and started to let fists fly.

"Let's give them a few moments." She said, putting her hand on Clint's shoulder and steering him out, all the while he kept a glare trained on Tony, looking revolted at the very sight of him.

Steve came to stand beside Tony, and likewise put a gentle hand on his back.

"I think we need to talk."

\--

Tony wasn't supposed to be out on this mission. Not today, when he was still in so much trouble. Not when he was still distrusted on account of them catching him red handed with Loki, and not when Fury had tore him a new one after Clint blabbed, before banning him from any Avengers work involving the god of mischief.

Not that Tony really wanted to be here. Thor had been acting iffy with him since he found out. Not in any awful way, but in a sort of solemn way; a sadness that ate at Tony more than any anger could have.

"It is good you've made some form of contact with my brother," he had told Iron Man a few days after the _incident_. "It is a relief to see that someone would still give him a chance."

But it wasn't about giving Loki chances, because Tony could see how far gone Loki was at first glance. There was no notion about saving him, or helping him, or changing him, because that wasn't what either of them wanted. Tony would sooner decapitate DUM-E with a hacksaw than ask Loki to go get some therapy. Outside of sarcasm, anyway.

Despite the fact he wasn't happy about being out in the open, where Thor could glance at him with that same stricken look, and Hulk could bat him out of the sky in a huff, or Clint could start taking pot-shots at him instead of focusing on the enemy, Tony still showed up. That was partially due to Fury's insistence that he didn't.

Loki was keeping back, behind those shadow creatures again, watching dispassionately as the Avengers minus one attempted to slice through them. Tony took a shortcut - going straight overhead and landing at Loki's side, much to the god's blatant displeasure.

Tony didn't have time for it. He could almost feel the way Hawkeye's aim swapped from one of those annoying little monsters to Tony's forehead. The inventor grabbed Loki's wrist, and told him to take them away. Loki, though not for lack of glaring, did as instructed almost instantly.

"They're trying to make us stop seeing each other."

"I can see that." Loki replied, stepping back and holding up a hand when Tony tried to follow him.

"It's not going to work."

"Isn't it? It seems to be working very well thus far." And it had. It had been two weeks since they'd last seen each other, which was why Tony had been in such a rush to get away from the tower to the battle, where otherwise he was only bothered to don the Iron Man suit out of his irritating moral obligation.

"Only because you're letting it." He argued, because that was also true.

"What would you prefer me to do, Stark?" And Tony winced, because it had been months since Loki called him that in private. "Barge in, make myself known, kidnap you forever? You would not take kindly to that. If I snuck in, however, I would trip the alarms and you would suffer the consequences. You would hate me for that, too. I really don't see what I can do otherwise."

Tony didn't either, clicking his tongue in discontentment as he tried to puzzle his way out. Loki just glared at him, still keeping his distance.

"You're a magician. You've got to have _something_."

"I don't have mystical solutions for all of your problems. If that was what you came here looking for you will leave disappointedly."

"That you're willing to let me leave is a good sign, at least." Tony observed. "You're not back to trying to kill me."

"Perhaps I should. Maybe that would dissuade your _friends_ of the notion they can try to get me through you."

"Can they?" Tony interrupted, because it was a serious question, and one he desperately wanted the answer to. "Can they get to you with me?"

Loki looked a moment away from denial, but paused. If he hadn't, Tony was certain he'd have believed whatever had left Loki's lips. He was the god of lies, after all. The human was happy, therefore, that the Jötun had hesitated.

"What if they're right and we should end this nonsense?" Loki said instead, unexpectedly, and as it turned out this hurt just as much.

Tony swallowed, and tried to squash the ill-timed surge of pesky emotions. "Screw 'em. Not _literally_ ," he specified to Loki's raised eyebrow. Loki knew what he meant. Loki just liked to piss Tony off.

"Perhaps we have been fooling ourselves, Stark."

It wasn't fair that Loki could sound and look and act so blasé about everything when Tony felt like he was being torn up into a thousand pieces and scattered to the wind. He shook his head uselessly, but found himself unable to come up with a counter argument. This past fortnight had given him a lot of time to consider this whole situation, and his talk with Steve - in which Steve had encouraged him to spell everything out in simple terms for the both of them - had been enlightening, making him think about things in a new light. Things that, in all honesty, weren't much of a revelation at all.

Like how Tony might be looking into this deeper than it really was. Or, like how Tony had a nasty habit of becoming dependent on people who stuck around for longer than was expected of them. People like Pepper, who should have quit in her first month. Or people like Rhodey, who should have given up on Tony back at MIT.

Or people like the Avengers, who lived with Tony, knew his flaws first hand, and yet still stayed.

Or people like Loki, who had no honest reason to drag this affair out as long as he had done.

"We can't let them dictate our lives."

"No," Loki agreed, but his tone hadn't shifted and Tony didn't feel heartened. "But nor can I ignore this any longer. This is nothing more than a ridiculous charade, and I have allowed it to go on for far too long."

"Loki-"

"Stark." Loki cut across him brusquely. "You say you are so brilliant, so show me proof. _Think_."

And Tony did. Tony already knew every reason why they were a bad idea. He had always known they were. But that hadn't stopped him before.

But he could also call a defeat when he saw one. There was no wriggle room here, no way of negotiating. Not with someone as volatile and sharp-edged as the god of mischief.

"And what if they _are_ right?" He finally said, because besides that there was nothing more to say.

"Then this is where we shall say our goodbyes."

He nodded stiffly, not looking Loki in the eye as the god waited for Tony's farewell. "It's better that we're apart. It's the only option."

When he glanced up, he only intended it to be a brief look. However, he was immediately caught by Loki's hypnotic emerald stare.

"I'm sorry, Stark." Was all he said, and then he was gone.

\--

"I'm sorry, Tony." Clint said after a battle with AIM, when they were helping clear-up and ship the bastards away for SHIELD's attention. By the time the agents on that helicarrier were through with these guys, they'd have wished they'd have never left the home-made labs in their mom's basement.

"No, you're not." Tony didn't have to have it spelt out to him to know what this was about.

It was almost three weeks with no peep from Loki, and in other circumstances the Avengers would have thought it was a relief. For the city it certainly was, and Fury was probably throwing a party every night to celebrate the fact, but in the Avengers tower opinions were a little different.

Earth's mightiest heroes, as they were beginning to be called, had been trying to find ways to talk to Tony for the last half month - ones that didn't involve him pushing them out of his labs upon first sight, or excusing himself for a _very important Stark Industries meeting, suddenly scheduled, no time to chat, catch you later_ _guys._

There had not been any success as of late.

But now Clint had decided to man up, after a tiring and annoying battle, where Tony was reckless and almost got himself killed after starting this mission irritated that today's villain wasn't who he wanted it to be.

They'd been through this pattern repetitively recently, and it was getting dreary.

Tony was still waiting for _him_ ; the dark haired, green eyed psychopath he'd been so taken with. However, since the last battle, no one had seen hide nor hair of Loki. Tony, they soon came to realise, wasn't the only one unhappy about that.

It wasn't that Loki's absence was a bad thing, because it was actually akin to a breath of fresh air amid the smog of criminals abounding this city. It was more that Tony had been nothing short of a misery since they'd broken up.

That's how the Avengers were describing it, anyway: a break up. Tony had come home that day after the battle and told them Loki was 'gone'. Then he'd proceeded to act like a heartbroken teenager after their first relationship had fallen to pieces around them.

He was withdrawn, stroppy, and occasionally nasty. At other times, he was too cheerful, which the team had come to anticipate with no shortage of dread.

They all thought the best course of action was to have Tony talk it through with someone. _Anyone_ , even. Steve, Bruce, Pepper, Rhodey. JARVIS, if he had to. They'd all tried at least once, but to no avail. Tony was not receptive to them, closed off and angry and upset, so there was nothing more they could do.

And then Clint decided it was time to get over his own mardy, and turned to Iron Man when they were rounding up the last of the evil scientists simply to apologise.

"I shouldn't have blown up on you."

" _Yes,_ you should have." The genius instantaneously countered. "You're allowed to get pissed off when I do something stupid." Now the tables were completely turned from their last argument, back when it was Clint wearing that exact shade of disgusted. "You can't pansy out now just because it turned out you were right."

"Have you seen yourself lately?" Hawkeye asked, not unkindly, referring to the state Tony had so often found himself since Loki had disappeared.

He was messy, or more so than usual, with a tired air to him that showed he hadn't been sleeping. Whilst he wasn't drinking anymore than usual, he was consuming his alcohol at odd times before hiding in his labs for hours on end, or going on impossibly long drives, or staying out too late and trying to cause a scandal.

"If you try to pull out a pity party, so help me I will punch you. I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're moping about him. About _Loki_ , for fucks sake!"

"I'm sorry for not feeling what I'm supposed to be feeling. I realise I'm meant to be relieved you saved me from one hell of a relationship, emphasis on the _hell_ ," Tony spat. "But I'd prefer it if you'd leave me alone. I'm _fine_."

"Raising your voice at me isn't going to prove you're right, Tony." Clint snapped back, patience waning, and it was then when Thor broke them apart. "I'm only trying to say sorry for being shit to you."As blond god put some space between the two bickering superheroes, some temper was regained, for the archer at least. "And I'd kinda hoped it'd make you recognise the fact we can see you're upset. We just want to help."

"There's no point. I'm okay, seriously. I'm not grieving over a relationship, especially since it wasn't even real in the first place. And I'm not just going to sit around waiting for him to show up like a soppy regency romance novel, okay? I'm going to do my job as CEO and Iron Man, I'm going to go to parties, and I am going to enjoy myself. I'm not completely pathetic."

"Right. And all of that doesn't sound like you're trying to get over the guy at all."

"Shut up."

"Guys," Steve said, trying to be the neutral party member here. "It's fine. If Tony says he's dealing with it-"

"Which I am-"

"Then we'll have to move on. Good talk, good talk. Just, this wasn't the best time for it."

It was then that Tony and Clint looked around and saw there were SHIELD agents watching them, along with a few curious stares from the few conscious AIM members, of whom seemed more baffled than anything.

"Look," Natasha said patiently, coming up to the group and putting a hand over both Tony's and Clint's own, and her voice softer than it had been for the previous three weeks. "Although I know you," she looked to Thor as well. "Love Loki despite all the shit things he's done, perhaps it's good that he's disappeared for now. We can put everything behind us and try again. If he shows up, then we'll deal with it then, and _only_ then."

Whilst Tony was nothing short of resentful and moody, he still agreed along with the rest of them, sealing the pact with a handshake between himself and his teammate.

"He won't come back." He stated, more miserably than he'd openly showed himself to be so far, and it hurt his team to see him in such a state over anyone, much less a man as awful as Loki. "So I wouldn't worry about it."

\--

And then Loki _did_ show up.

And then he kidnapped Tony mid-way through the fight.

"Stark's gone off grid!" Fury exclaimed, as if it were a surprise at this point. Meanwhile, the Avengers didn't so much as blink.

"Well, at least this way he won't be moping any more." Clint grumbled, his own form of begrudging acceptance, whilst Thor hit his foes with a little more joy and less of the anxiety he'd been bearing about his shoulders this previous month.

"I knew my brother would not keep his distance. He cares not about what he should or should not do."

"I guess he and Tony are kind of perfect for each other, then." Cap pointed out as Thor beamed at him.

"I'm making no promises not to shoot your boyfriend in the eye, Stark." Hawkeye sneered across the comms, but if Tony heard him he didn't answer.

Apparently, he had more important things to do with his mouth. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> I think this might have been a little OOC, but to be honest if you want IC frostiron it'd be inexcusably dark. This was only a little bit of fun. Right up until Clint got all angsty on me. That wasn't supposed to happen.  
> And sorry if there are any errors. I was impatient and uploaded it quickly.


End file.
